Ed Lacy - Room To Swing

“Naw, naw. Too many guys in the game now. No work. Divorce stuff, skip tracing, guard duty; they don't amount to a hill of beans. Burns, Pinkerton, Holmes have the big guard jobs sewed up. Know why I hired this engineer, why I'm paying him as much as I take home? Only money around these days is in industrial spying. For that you need bugs and recorders and all kinds of electrical gadgets, and it adds up to nothing but a lousy overhead unless you got an 'in.'”

“Are you getting any of this industrial gravy?”

He gave his cold cigar a workout between his teeth as he said, “I'm getting the wrong end of the stick. Toussaint, in the old days, if a guy was sober and willing to put in hours, he could make a fair living, even big money if he wanted to be a rat and labor fink. Now... I got a... a small manufacturer, coming out with a new cheap line. His success will depend on when a competitor, the big company in the business, puts their product on the market. You see, if my boy comes out first, the big company can undersell him, so he has to catch them when they're in full production and no time to cut his throat. All he can pay is a lousy grand.”

“What's lousy about a thousand bucks?”

“What I'm trying to tell you, it don't mean nothing no more. Takes me a week and plenty of dough to find out where one of the big company's executives hangs around. Then I hire a broad to pick him up and we got her joint rigged like an electrical plant, with guys outside listening to the conversation. £ got to pay for three nights of loving and whiskey before Lover says anything we can use. The nut comes out to over nine hundred bucks—where's my pork chops?”

“Why did you take it?”

“Had to; only way to get in with these industrial big boys. You should see the bunk I give out with—make a presentation, everything typed up with wide margins, in an expensive folder. This guy, he plays golf with a real big boy, washing-machine manufacturer who's interested in learning about the new models due next year. But you see me on a skip-tracing deal now, still hustling for a lousy ten bucks. Pull over there, in front of the cigar store. I'll blow.”

I double-parked and Ted got out, straightened his clothes and cursed my bucket seats. Then he said, “You're still young enough to get in something else. If there ain't nothing in the racket for us wh—downtown boys, what's in it for you?”

“I'm doing okay.”

“Sure, for this month. And next month you're bouncing drunks at dances for pennies. Toussaint, hop on that case I gave you.”

“I will. Keep your blood pressure down, Ted.”

I drove down to Canal Street and parked outside the phone building, lit my pipe. Miss Robbens said the TV studio had other work for investigators; if I buttered her up, remained her pet Negro for a while—how much of it could I get? Ted had said the main thing was contacts; she could be that. First thing I had to do was move out of my bedroom-office, put up a big-time front. It would cost but it was worth the gamble.

Sybil came out with a group of women and as usual she liked the idea of my Jaguar waiting for her, the impression we both made on the other women—all of them white. Although my darkness was a real “problem” to Sybil, with the phone-company white girls she made a point of giving me a big fat kiss whenever I picked her up, as if to prove she was a Negro and proud of it, and all that.

Opening the door, I watched her walk toward the car, the sway of her solid hips. I hadn't seen her for two days and now she had a blond streak in her auburn hair—the newest style. It looked phony on her.

Sybil was what my old man used to call “tinted whites”: her skin was a creamy white and her hair was “good” (an expression that used to make the old man mount his soapbox at once). I suppose Sybil could have easily “passed.” She had the kind of colour and features that if you saw her in Harlem you'd assume she was “coloured.” If you saw her downtown you might think she was Spanish, if you thought about it at all. When I was out with Sybil I often collected the same kind of “looks” I'd picked up with Kay. I suppose the reason Sybil didn't pass was her old-fashioned ideas about colour—the prestige she thought her lightness gave her in Harlem.

Sybil was a habit with me. We had been going together for about three years. Her parents were from one of the islands and when she was a kid in Washington, D.C., Sybil had tried hard to lose her accent; now she worked harder at keeping it, spoke with a kind of clipped English. She was twenty-nine years old, had married a jerk when she was a kid, worked in an aircraft factory during the war to put her husband through med school. When the army took over his education this louse divorced Sybil and married a Chicago widow who owned real estate. Sybil was a habit, as I said, and most times a very comfortable habit. We hit it off, although sometimes her phony standards made me go straight up. Like the few times I'd realized how she felt about my dark skin, or like she would never come to my room, although Roy and Ollie knew all about us.

We kissed, her mouth cool, a good smell of perfume about her. “This is a surprise, Touie.”

Cutting across Canal to the highway, I said, “I was downtown on a case. A big fish, honey. I'm going to make fifteen hundred dollars!” As we raced up the highway, the Hudson rough and cold looking, I told her as much about the case as I could. Then my ideas about opening a real office downtown, perhaps going to school for a month or so to learn about these electrical gadgets.

Sybil thought I ought to pay up my debts, bank the rest, forget my big ideas. But of course she was thrilled about me getting the dough and we were doing fine. Two mistakes. I mean driving along the Hudson in my Jag.

We reached her brownstone basement one-room “apartment”—with a view of the river, if you stuck your head far enough out the window to break your neck (and for which she was paying seventy-two dollars a month). As I took off my coat and tie, I mentioned the post-office deal. That tore it.

“Oh, Touie, darling!” Sybil said, putting everything she had into a big hug. “That's the real news. When do you start?”

“I don't know,” I said, kissing her, running my hands through her soft hair. And wondering, for no damn reason, how many generations it took to produce her creamy skin. “I don't even know if I'm going to take it.”

I felt her tighten up before she stepped back out of my arms. “Why not? It's civil service, what we've always talked about.”

“Sure, S.O.P. for a Negro. That's why they call the main post office Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sybil, honey, this TV contract changes things. This is my big chance to start a real agency.”

“You sound like a little boy infatuated with private eyes,” she said coldly, taking off her coat. She was wearing a simple striped blouse and skirt that showed off her chunky figure. Sybil was very style conscious, mainly because she had this crazy idea a coloured woman had to prove she knew how to dress. The trouble was, often the “latest” styles weren't intended for Sybil's solid figure.

Hanging up my jacket I took out my wallet. “How much do I owe you, honey?”

She pulled back the Japanese screen from the kitchenette, started the coffee working. “Thirty-five dollars.”

I gave her fifty bucks extra. “Buy yourself something.”

Very pleased, she thanked me with a tiny kiss, pocketed the money, and went on with her cooking. I started on my specialty—a tossed salad.

She put on eggs and sausages, humming to herself. I knew exactly how her mind was working. As if I were an excited kid that needed cooling off, a moment later she said, “Touie, this is your big opportunity, so let's not talk nonsense. You'll sub for a few years, but even so, you'll be making about four thousand, and what with my job we can easily afford a new apartment, perhaps in the houses being built on 125th Street, interracial, too. We'll buy all new furniture, and a new car. Or a house out in St. Albans with—”